


Appel du vide

by ChromeHoplite



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Adult Ciel Phantomhive, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Ficlet, M/M, Melancholy, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 01:06:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17356061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChromeHoplite/pseuds/ChromeHoplite
Summary: Sebastian had once called him beautiful and foolish, but he’d had done better calling him what he really was: a weak, pathetic human. A doll to dress, a pet to feed, a plaything to bathe.A meal to groom.***** note: this fic has been tagged as a canon divergent AU: it differs in that O!Ciel is aged up to 18 but with canon events*****





	Appel du vide

**Author's Note:**

> Working through my own feelings of inadequacy by writing this.

Sebastian had once called him beautiful and foolish, but he would have done better calling him what he really was: a weak, pathetic human. A doll to dress, a pet to feed, a plaything to bathe.

_A meal to groom._

It had come on suddenly, as unexpected as seeing his dead brother saunter down the manor staircase. 

But worse.

– because he’d locked that part of himself away years ago. Had shattered into a million, billion pieces so that there was no way he could be salvaged. He would want for no one, feel no loss as great as that which he’d already suffered.

Continued to suffer.

Gramps had made his allegiance known, his remaining kin had abandoned him, and those he’d served faithfully had set a bounty upon his head.

Though not the servants.

And not _him_.

He now understood that this was to his detriment.

Picked up and carried, but falling. Always falling.

Without thinking. Without warning.

_Acta non verba._

It had been so much easier when vengeance was all that consumed him.

Their covenant had stated that the demon was to protect his contractor, but he doubted Sebastian had even considered this.

Or perhaps it merely entertained him. It was likely the case.

Had he himself ever truly understood what it was that Ciel had gone through? To be ripped from the cage where they’d been kept and betrayed by their captors, much like his own tenebrific heart betrayed him now. Held and restrained, his brother by large hands, himself by severed heartstrings weighed down by impractical absurdity.

Both of them gutted.

He felt it, cutting like a knife, sharp like nostalgia. An unquenchable heat at the center of his chest radiating out. No amount of water could extinguish the aching blaze. Instead, it imbibed the once soothing liquid like a sponge, making the burden heavier, denser, hotter, like a collapsed star eating everything in its path, never satisfied. 

Stubborn tears fell like gasoline rain, igniting the hurt. Wracking sobs made breathing difficult, as if thorny, silvered roses had been fed to him on purpose all these years and had found their home in his lungs rather than his stomach.

He could command it of the devil: _Lie to me. Tell me after all this time, you feel the same._

But he knew the response would break him far more than the ravaging flames that licked at his core, making short work of turning him to ash and soot from the inside out.

“My lord, our contract clearly states that I am not to lie to you.”

Worse still, the knowing, simpering smile, the ambiguous intensity of those invasive crimson eyes.

What Sebastian knew was hunger. Possessiveness. It wasn’t love, because love was for feeble-minded humans, for those with a penchant for self-mutilation.

Sebastian was not the kind you confessed your desires to; a predator always used its prey’s vulnerability against them. His feelings for the demon would forever be obscured like the melancholic impossibility of moonlight blooming a rare ghost orchid through a canopy so thick that even the sun at its zenith could not penetrate it.

And yet, what if, from out of nowhere, a tree were to fall? Two of them? Ten of them? What if he himself cut them down? Or better still, he cultivated the treasured orchid and tended to it? Fought to keep it alive despite the odds of a cool, rainy London climate?

Stubborn and determined. 

The way the butler liked him.

~~Liked him.~~

Was amused by him.

What he needed was distance.

_Laughable._

How in the hell was he supposed to separate himself sufficiently to mourn unrequitedness, to purge himself of his treacherous heart, when the damned object of his affection was tethered fangs, claws and tendrils to him until his very last breath?

There was only one way out…


End file.
